Precisely what, you might justifiably wonder, is the Duppie? Well, the answer to that particular question can be found by having a good read of the new post from Dr. Bob Curran, which is located in the Creature of the Month slot at New Page Books’ blog.

Bob notes: “As darkness steals slowly over the islands of the West Indies, there are strange stirrings amongst the lonely canebrakes and in the shadowy buttress-roots of the silk-cotton trees and as the moon comes up, peculiar shapes scurry along the dirt roads between the isolated rural settlements of the countryside. It is well to keep ones doors and windows locked and to light the lamp and think of good and Christian things for this is the hour of the duppies…”

3 Responses to “Profiling the Duppie”

There’s a bad old movie from 1974 that encorporates a character called a duppie. Blacksnake is one of the few movies written and produced by the late Russ Meyer that is not preoccupied with women with big–okay, gigantic–chests. It was filmed on Barbados and is set in a slave plantation there ca. 1800. The duppie in this instance is just a man who the lead character wants to punish, and he is castrated, has his tongue cut out and has lost his mind. Although he appears as a huge man with long hair and beard, wearing only mud and torn clothing, he actually was meant to be a monster of some kind, since the role was specifically cast with the most recent actor to have played Frankenstein’s monster, David Prowse. I’ve never seen the movie–it’s hard to get in US format–but he doesn’t appear to do much other than roar and attack people, and he is killed with a shotgun blast. [This info from Prowse’s recent autobiography.]

Sounds like Meyer or someone did tap into this legend. Since the movie did not have many unclothed women and was very bad and ultra violent, it was Meyer’s least lucrative film. Kind of the opposite, I guess, since it takes a man with a big chest, and arms, etc. and objectifies him. 😉

Sometimes, you can get into cryptobiology from the strangest and most sordid paths, …

I’m not good cutting and pasting pictures, but the Blacksnake duppie is to be seen here.

Your duppie looks kind of cute, except maybe for all those teeth. He does look like a shaved version of the monster in Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, which Prowse had played a few years before. Easy to make a big suit and stick a big man in it, I guess. Not so much fun for the one stuck in the suit though.